Painting Beyond Black and White: Vincent Valdez’s The City (Review and Q&A)

Vincent Valdez’s recently debuted painting The City I is tucked away on the second floor of the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, perhaps to shield certain visitors from its controversial nature, but also to make a metaphoric point: racism doesn’t need to be front and center for it to be alive and well. In the case of Valdez’s artwork, a large format four-panel painting depicting 14 fully garbed Klansmen—including a baby cradled in the arms of its hooded mother—his piece dominates the space in a semi-hidden room, away from the main art exhibit taking place on the ground floor. If you’re willing to turn a few corners, you will be met with the defiant stares of larger-than-life hatred glaring back at you, which could also be said for our country’s ever-present racial tension and discord. On the one-year anniversary of Charlottesville’s Unite the Right rally, how far have we come as a democracy, a nation of immigrants, a post-slavery society, and where exactly are we going, especially if we choose not to admit that there is an enemy among us, and possibly within us?

Some Things You Might Need to Start Your Day

An egg yoke

A dollop of white sugar

A broken scissor blade

Double palm strips

Coconut oil

Poetry & ProseWillie PerdomoAugust 14, 2018Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes, willie perdomo

Thinking Its Presence: Form, Race, and Subjectivity in Contemporary Asian American Poetry by Dorothy Wang

Every now and then, an Asian-American student asks me, “Should I write about race? It’s important to me and I want to, but I’m afraid I’ll be pigeonholed.”

I always think it through on the spot, to make sure I still agree with myself. Among my answers: “Poetry is such an obscure genre, it’s not worth doing anything but what means the most to you.” Or: “Robert Frost said a poem begins as a lump in the throat. Without that, your poems will lack urgency, so write about what’s eating at you.” Or: “Look at what’s happening politically, all over the Western world. Open racism is back. Your story needs to be told.”

Read Between the Lines

My name is Marty Denton and I am a singer/ songwriter/poet from McGehee, Arkansas. I am 67 years old. I am CEO of Trip Jct Records LLC. I have songs on Pandora, Spotify, Google Play, ITunes, Amazon, ITunes radio and many more. Many artists have recorded my songs. I also write poetry and have over 700 songs and poems in the Library of Congress. I have published poems on many retail sites. This collection is presently at:

On Some of my Favorite Photographers

Since having written this in graduate school several years ago, I have been lucky enough to see some quite extraordinary photography exhibitions in my new home, New York City. I went to see the Speed of Life retrospective honoring Peter Hujar’s work at the Morgan Library and Museum recently along with William Eggleston’s Los Alamos series at the Met. Before that I was amazed by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photographs of India at the Rubin Museum. I have also been incredibly impressed by Emma Elizabeth Tillman’s work and, most notably, her recently published collection of photographs entitled Disco Ball Soul. All of these photographers have inspired me to take a look back at this piece I wrote where I discuss some of the artists who made an impact on me as a college student.

I stare at painted ceilings

I stare at painted ceilings, I stare at parting clouds

Confined to thoughts of interchanging forms

Your skin and cheeks when you walked through my elementary school doors

Determined to not let sickness stop you

Warrior goddess—Mother

Poetry & ProseLuci BerriosAugust 13, 2018Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes, Luci Berrios

Long-awaited Nas album, Nasir, falters under great expectations.

After a six-year hiatus, the much-anticipated release of Nas’s album, Nasir, left fans and critics with mixed reactions. The album arrived as part of the “Wyoming Sessions,” a series of albums executively produced by Kanye West as part of a grand experiment of rapid-fire studio production. The other albums include Pusha T’s Daytona, West’s collaboration with Kid Cudi eponymously entitled Kids See Ghosts, Teyana Taylor’s K.T.S.E. (Keep That Same Energy), and West’s own album, Ye. Each album is limited to seven tracks, and West has hinted at a loose thematic relationship to the seven deadly sins.

“David Grossman’s A Horse Walks Into A Bar: a Stand-Up Transcription of Humanity”

Most of us have experienced that nauseating awkwardness - the physically agonizing discomfort - of sitting through a comedy show that’s just not going right. That shifting in the seat when a joke falls flat. That cacophonous cough when a pun doesn’t receive the laughing track that was anticipated. Nobody characterizes that experience better than David Grossman in his most recent novel, A Horse Walks Into A Bar. Translated from Hebrew, this novel recounts the sometimes-magical-sometimes-excruciatingly-unsuccessful final standup of Dov Greenstein, an Israeli comic at a dive bar in Netanya, north of Tel Aviv. Over the course of his two-hour act, sprinkled with Holocaust jokes and ‘humorous’ stabs at the audience, Dov relates the battered tale of his life — what’s led him to his disturbed state, as a comedian today.

As within so with out

That’s what I’ll do

I will live! I will love

I will live for her

Poetry & ProseLuci BerriosAugust 7, 2018Steve Cannon, Luci Berrios, Poetry

Fat Bellied Pig

It stung that day

to overhear a woman complaining

about a fat bellied pig

to another in the park

as I walked by

Poetry & ProseRyder MillerAugust 2, 2018Ryder W. Miller, Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes

White Rabbit

It will never appear

in the retro candy store

among 5th Avenue bars

Poetry & ProseChavisa WoodsJuly 26, 2018a gathering of the tribes, Adrienne Su, White Rabbit

30-Foot Painting of the K.K.K. Puts a Museum to the Test

AUSTIN, Tex. — The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin knew it had a painting on its hands that required sensitivity: a 30-foot-wide panorama by the Houston-based artist Vincent Valdez that imagined a modern-day Ku Klux Klan gathering. And a string of recent art-world controversies had emphasized the need for such curatorial caution.

On our mindsMichael HardyJuly 23, 2018Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes, Michael Hardy

ARTFORUM: Joe Overstreet

Joe Overstreet’s experimental paintings from the early 1970s were made to be suspended from ceilings and tied to floors using a system of ropes and grommets. As a result, they occupy a good deal of three-dimensional space, and by design their shapes change every time they are installed, depending on how they are stretched out, draped, or crumpled. In some works, such as St. Expedite II and Untitled, both 1971, and Untitled, 1972, Overstreet has painted squares of canvas in solid colors—red, green, navy blue, deep purple—edged in contrasting stripes.

"Our Lady"

Somewhere the bell tolls yet the Lady stands so tall

She stands the test of time as a testament to us all

Wars have come and gone but she never seems to fall

She welcomes one and all in defiance to a border wall

Poetry & ProseMarty DentonJuly 23, 2018Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes, Marty Denton

Nkyinkyim

Sometimes, I stop. I know I shouldn’t, I should keep moving, head down, eyes down, back down, hunched, picking and pulling. But sometimes I need to stop. I see you in my mind. Tiny and warm. I remember kissing you on your forehead and holding you tight to my bare breast. I couldn’t give you anything else. There was none I could give except my body.

Take to the Stage: A Review of the Ridgewood Coffee Company Open Mic

I remember, vividly, my first performance at the Ridgewood Coffee Company Open Mic. A summer evening, about six or seven years ago. I remember pacing outside, along the faded, orange brick of the cafe’s exterior; fingers tingling with the nerves of a performer on deck; replaying the track of Billy Gillman’s “Oklahoma” I was prepping myself to cover. The music from my IPhone mingled in the air with the humming and guitar-strumming from musicians around me, sounds native to a coffee shop like this: pulsating with artistic energy.

On My Ex-lover’s Birthday

Every day is an anniversary of something.

The longer you live, the more there is

to celebrate and

to mourn.

Review of, Welcome Distractions: Accessible Poems for Time-Strapped Humans (Autonomedia, 2018)

Let's be perfectly clear. Carol Wierzbicki's Welcome Distractions: Accessible Poems for Time-Strapped Humans is a terrific book of poems of/for our time. A book, dare I say it, of terrific female-take poems of and for our time, that will last, that should be required reading for all. And fun. And you will gasp: Yes! she nailed it.

Ocean’s 8: The quirky little street kid to the Ocean’s big brothers

Some film introduce you to characters that stay with you hours afterwards or are so profound you only find more genius in it with every viewing. Ocean’s 8 does neither but it knows what it is and that’s pure unadulterated, a fun, breezy comedic break from the heavy cloud of a chaotic political climate, and viewed at the movie theater, escape from the blistering sun. Ocean’s 8 is the playful younger, street kid to it’s heavier three big brothers. In the theater someone joked that it was called Ocean’s 8 because they couldn’t find 14 actresses as this not a pre-quel ,but takes place after Ocean’s 13.

Cherry Blossoms and the Delta Cotton

The mockingbird builds her nest in the tall oak tree

Singing her song, always so happy and free

Back and forth she flies never stopping to rest

It must be safe, it must be the best